道德是天生的嗎？
Innateness of morality
 What does it mean to assert that human
morality is innate?
孟子
 「君子所性，仁義禮智根於心。」
 （「君子表現他的本性，仁德、義行、守禮、明智
都根植在心中。」）
 「惻隱之心，仁之端也；羞惡之心，義之端也；辭
讓之心，禮之端也；是非之心，智之端也。人之有
是四端也，猶其有四體也。」
 「無惻隱之心，非人也；無羞惡之心，非人也；無
辭讓之心，非人也；無是非之心，非人也。」
荀子
 「人之性惡，其善者偽也。今人之性，生而有好利
焉，順是，故爭奪生而辭讓亡焉；生而有疾惡焉，
順是，故殘賊生而忠信亡焉；生而有耳目之欲，有
好聲色焉，順是， 故淫亂生而禮義文理亡焉。然則
從人之性，順人之情，必出於爭奪，合於犯分亂理，
而歸於曓。故必將有師法之化，禮義之道，然後出
於辭讓，合於文理，而歸於治。用此觀之，然則人
之性惡明矣，其善者偽也。」
 「人的本性是邪惡的，那些善良的行為是後天的作為。人的
本性一生下來就喜好財利，依從這種本性，因此人們就產生
了争搶掠奪， 謙讓的品德就消失了；一生下來就有妒忌憎
恨的心理，依從這種本性，因此就產生了殘殺陷害，忠誠守
信的品德就消失了，一生下來就有聲色的欲望，有喜歡美好
音 樂、美色的本能，依從這種本性，因此就會產生淫蕩混
亂，禮義法度就消失了。那麼，放縱人的本性，依從人的情
欲，就一定導致争搶掠奪，一定跟違犯等級名分、 擾亂禮
義法度的行為相合，而最終回到暴亂局面。因此一定需要師
長和法席的教化，禮義的引導，這樣之後，對推辭謙讓這種
美德人們才會做出，對國家的的禮法人們才會遵守，（國家）
就最終走向安定太平。用這些事實看人的本性，那麼人的本
性是邪惡的道理就很明顯了，那些善良的行為是人們後天的
作為。」
問題
 孟子和荀子在主張道德是否天生時，所
謂的「天生」指的是什麼意思？
達爾文的想法
 Darwin在The Descent of Man當中，竭盡所
能論述道德感(moral sense)乃是源自於群
居的本能(social instincts)。
 根據R.J. Richards(1995: 254; 1999: 142-143)，
Darwin所描繪的道德感之演變發展過程
可區分為四個階段：
第一階段
 原始人類在演化出一些足夠強大的群居
本能之後，賴此以結合成社群。
 這些群居的本能，極有可能是親子之間
的喜好之感的延伸。
 而如此的情感並非人類所獨有，若干動
物也同樣有之。
 “It has often been assumed that animals were in the
first place rendered social, and that they feel as a
consequence uncomfortable when separated from
each other, and comfortable whilst together; but it
is a more probable view that these sensations were
first developed, in order that those animals which
would profit by living in society, should be induced
to live together, in the same manner as the sense of
hunger and the pleasure of eating were, no doubt,
first acquired in order to induce animals to eat.
 The feeling of pleasure from society is probably an
extension of the parental or filial affections, since
the social instinct seems to be developed by the
young remaining for a long time with their parents;
and this extension may be attributed in part to habit,
but chiefly to natural selection.
 With those animals which were benefited by living in
close association, the individuals which took the
greatest pleasure in society would best escape various
dangers, whilst those that cared least for their comrades,
and lived solitary, would perish in greater numbers.
With respect to the origin of the parental and filial
affections, which apparently lie at the base of the social
instincts, we know not the steps by which they have
been gained; but we may infer that it has been to a large
extent through natural selection.” (Darwin, 1871, 1: 80)
 親子之間的喜好之感主要來自天擇之作
用，而其延伸—亦即群居本能—同樣也
主要是來自天擇的作用：
 當群居有利於生存時，喜好群居而結合
成社群的動物在生存競爭上便占有優勢。
 在群居本能之中，同情的感受(sympathetic feeling)尤
其重要。同情使得這些動物在其同伴受苦時也能感
同身受，從而推動它們去解除其同伴的痛苦。同樣
地，同情(sympathy)也並非人類所獨有，若干動物也
有之。對於同情之感的起源，Darwin則是訴諸天擇
之作用在社群的層級上以說明之。
 “…for those communities, which included the greatest
number of the most sympathetic numbers, would flourish
best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” (1: 130)
第二階段
 社群成員一旦獲得足夠的心智能力，即使在群居本能暫
時被其他衝動給凌駕而受挫的情況下，也得以事後回想
起那個尚未獲得滿足的群居本能。在Darwin看來，此即
良心(conscience)之起源。
 Darwin以覓食的母鳥，因順從求生本能而往南遷徙，留
下嗷嗷待哺的雛鳥為例(1: 137)：雖然母鳥的求生本能一
時之間凌駕其照顧雛鳥的群居本能，但由於群居本能的
持久性，一旦母鳥抵達目的地而滿足其求生本能之後，
若她會回想起那些被她拋棄的雛鳥，並能感同身受那些
雛鳥的遭遇，她將被懊悔給折磨不已。
 “When arrived at the end of her long journey, and the
migratory instinct has ceased to act, what an agony of
remorse the bird would feel, if, from being endowed with
great mental activity, she could not prevent the image
constantly passing through her mind, of her young ones
perishing in the bleak north from cold and hunger.” (1:
137)
第三階段
 語言的發展使得社群成員能夠表達並且
輕易溝通彼此的需求，甚至進一步表述
成眾人在行為處事上的約定習俗。
第四階段
 社群成員逐漸養成一種習性(habit)，即在行動時會顧
慮到他人之讚許與否，會在意他人的褒貶。
 當然，什麼行為會有什麼結果，這需要根據過去的
經驗以進行推理方能預計。所以在這個階段，道德
感的演進同時仰賴理性與經驗。
 藉著理性與經驗之助，社群成員愈來愈明白怎麼樣
的行為真正有利於社群整體。一旦養成對於如此行
為的在意與褒揚的習性之後，社群成員便會習以為
常地從事有利社群整體的行為，且代代相傳。
Hobbes vs. Darwin
 如果我們對照T. Hobbes(1588-1679)對於道德之起源
的說明，將更能看出Darwin之說法的特殊之處。
 Hobbes把人性刻劃為純粹自利(self-interest)的追求。
所以，若放任人自行其是，其結果便是人人追求自
利而相互爭鬥不已。如此一來，會使得個人所極欲
追求的自利反而無法確保。於是，在理性的設計之
下，道德才應運而生，人類文明自此進入一個全新
的階段。
 Hobbes的道德起源論與Darwin之說法的不同之處有
二(O. Flanagan, 2003: 382-383)：
 “First, Darwin is more of a Humean than a Hobbesian. If we
are egoists, then, for Hume as for Darwin, we are egoists with
fellow-feeling. We care about the weal and woe of, at least,
some others.
 Second—and this follows from the first point—morality was
not ‘something altogether new on the face of the earth’ at some
moment in human history. According to Darwin, Homo sapiens,
presumably like their extinct social ancestors, as well as certain
closely related species, such as chimps and bonobos, possess
instincts and emotions that are proto-moral; that is, these
creatures possess the germs, at least, of such virtues as
sympathy, fidelity and courage.”
達爾文的道德天生論要點
 從Darwin對於道德感之起源的說明，可歸結出以下幾點：
 道德是天生的(innate)，它非但不違反人之本性，反而是
根植於人性(human nature)之中。
 誠然，道德感的充分發展必須以足夠強的心智能力作為
條件，也必須在經驗學習當中成長，但這些事實並不妨
礙我們視道德為天生的，是人之天性的一部份。
 道德是天擇的產物，是有利於生存的適應(adaptation)，有
如眼、耳、鼻…等等也是有利於人之生存的適應一樣。
要點二
 值得注意的是，說道德就人類而言，乃是天生的，
並非意謂每一個個別的人都具有道德感。
 畢竟當我們說眼、耳、鼻…等等就人類而言，也是
天生的時候，並非意謂每一個個別的人都具有眼、
耳、鼻…等等。道德失常者或多或少總是存在，如
同不幸的失明者、失聰者、失去嗅覺能力者…等等
也或多或少總是存在一樣，我們並不會因此就認為
他們不是人。
要點三
 另一方面，說道德是人性的一部份，並不表示道德
感即為人之本質(essence)—所謂的構成人之所以為人
的充分且必要的條件。
 由於Darwin的物種演化理論並不支持任何動、植物
具有所謂永恆不變動的本質，它當然不會把道德感
視為人之所以為人的永恆不變動的本質。說人類的
道德感是天生的、是人性的一部份，指的就是如此
的道德感乃是天擇的產物，它是有利於人之生存的
適應。
要點四
 再者，從演化論的觀點而言，過去的適應未必在未
來也依然是適應。如果環境的變遷足夠劇烈，則過
去一度是有利的適應性狀，有可能在環境的劇烈變
遷之後不再是適應的性狀。而如此的說法理當也適
用於人類的道德感上。
Joyce’s innateness of morality thesis
 The process of evolution has designed us to think in
moral terms, that biological natural selection has
conferred upon us the tendency to employ moral
concepts.
 (Human capacity for making moral judgments can be
given an adaptive explanation in genetic terms: the
present-day existence of the trait can be explained by
reference to a genotype having granted ancestors
reproductive advantage.)
對於IM的可能誤解
 It doesn’t follow that an innate trait will develop
irrespective of the environment (for that isn’t true of any
phenotypic trait), or even that it is highly canalized.
 It does not follow that there is a “gene for morality.”
 Nor do this conception of innateness and the references
to “human nature” that routinely come with it imply any
dubious metaphysics regarding a human essence.
Asserting that bipedalism is innate and part of human
nature doesn’t imply that it is a necessary condition for
being human.
IM論題可強可弱
 Saying that we naturally make moral judgments may mean
that we are designed to have particular moral attitudes
toward particular kinds of things (for example, finding
incest and patricide morally offensive), or it may mean
that we have a proclivity to find something-or-other
morally offensive (morally praiseworthy, etc.), where the
content is determined by contingent environmental and
cultural factors.
 These possibilities represent ends of a continuum; thus,
many intermediate positions are tenable.
對於IM的質疑一
 By claiming that human morality is genetically
“programmed,” one seems to deny the
centrality of cultural influence, or even imply
that any manifestation of morality is
inevitable.
回應
 With how much ease environmental factors may
affect or even prevent the development of any
genetically encoded trait is an empirical question.
 Stephen Jay Gould was dead wrong when he wrote:
“If we are programmed to be what we are, then
these traits are ineluctable. We may, at best, channel
them, but we cannot change them either by will,
education, or culture”
 Phenylketonuria (PKU)（苯酮尿症）, for example, is a
genetic metabolic disorder that can cause terrible mental
retardation but can be easily avoided with a restricted diet;
Down’s Syndrome, by comparison, is a genetic disorder about
which nothing can at present be done to avoid the expression
of its characteristics.
 There is no general relationship between genotype and
phenotypic expression.
 PKU is just one clear counterexample of a trait that is
genetically “programmed” in some individuals but
straightforwardly preventable.
對於IM的質疑二
 An evolutionary account of morality would
deprive us of our freedom of will.
 Patricia Williams (1993) has argued that if
morality were innate then our moral judgments
would be coerced from within, but that, since
in order to be ethical beings we must be free, it
is incoherent to appeal to evolution in order to
explain our ethical nature; therefore morality
cannot be innate.
回應
 Freedom does not involve the capacity to alter the
course of neural causation by an act of pure mental
determination; it simply means acting on your desires.
 Thus an evolutionary explanation of an action may
actually amount to a clarification of the nature of the
action’s freedom, since it may well be an explanation
of where the relevant desires came from.
 Human desires, after all, don’t come from
nowhere—all desires have a history, and some of
them have an evolutionary history.
 Everyday thinking allows that beliefs and desires are
frequently caused by environment factors without
thereby counting as “coerced.” So, there is no reason
to say things would stand differently if some beliefs
and desires are caused by genetic factors.
對於IM的質疑三
 The hypothesis that morality is innate is
undermined by observation of the great
variation in moral codes across human
communities.
回應
 Nor need the hypothesis that morality is
innate be undermined by observation of the
great variation in moral codes across human
communities, for the claim need not be
interpreted as holding that morality with
some particular content is fixed in human
nature.
 The analogous claim that humans have innate
language-learning mechanisms does not
imply that Japanese, Italian, or Swahili is
innate.
 We are prepared to learn some language or
other, and the social environment determines
which one.
 Though there is no doubt that the content
and the contours of any morality are highly
influenced by culture, it may be that the fact
that a community has a morality at all is to be
explained by reference to dedicated
psychological mechanisms forged by
biological natural selection.
 That said, it is perfectly possible that natural
selection has taken some interest in the
content of morality, perhaps favoring broad
and general universals.
 This “fixed” content would pertain to actions
and judgments that enhance fitness despite
the variability of ancestral environments.
Michael Ruse
 “ethics is an adaptation, put in place
by our genes as selected in the
struggle for life, to aid each and every
one of us individually.” (1995: 257)
問題
 Why would a moral sense evolve by natural
selection? (Why might a moral sense be
adaptive?)
 How did a moral sense evolve?—What did
natural selection do to the human brain to
enable moral judgment?
What is biological adaptation?
 An adaptation, as commonly defined, is “a
feature that has become prevalent in a
population because of a selective advantage
conveyed by that feature in the improvement
in some function.” (Futuyma, 2009: G1)
Task Analysis
 To establish that moral sense is an adapted feature, one
needs to show:
 (1) the function that moral sense serves;
 (2) the selective advantage conveyed by moral sense in
the improvement of the function that it serves;
 (3) that moral sense has become prevalent in a human
population because it conveys the selective advantage in
the improvement of the function it serves.
Divided opinions on the adaptation thesis
 Adaptationists: Ruse (1986; 1995) & Wilson
(1986); Joyce (2006)
 Anti-adaptationists: Lahti (2003); Ayala
(2009); Prinz (2007; 2008)
Joyce
 “[T]he process of evolution has designed
us to think in moral terms, and biological
natural selection has conferred upon us the
tendency to employ moral concepts.”
(2006: 3)
Ruse
 “The point about morality (says the Darwinian) is that it is
an adaptation to get us to go beyond regular wishes,
desires and fears, and to interact socially with people.
How does it get us to do this? By filling us full of
thoughts about obligations and duties, and so forth. And
the key to what is going on is that we are then moved to
action, precisely because we think morality is something
laid upon us. We may have choice about whether to do
right and wrong, but we have no choice about right and
wrong in themselves.” (1986: 253)
Lahti
 Compared to nonhuman animals with desires
and emotional tendencies, moral sense does
not convey the selective advantage in the
improvement of the function that it serves.
Prinz
 Moral sense is an evolutionary by-product of human nonmoral capacities: human beings are equipped with a range
of non-moral tools, such as emotions, memory, ruleformation, imitation, and mind-reading, that could
collectively give rise to a moral capacity.
 In other words, moral sense has become prevalent not
because it conveys a selective advantage in the
improvement of the function it serves, but because it is a
by-product of other adaptive features.
Lahti’s argument
 Lahti pointed out, if one takes seriously the
conservatism of natural selection, then one
probably has difficulties in explaining why
there had evolved “a biologically
unprecedented mechanism for a purpose
which is achieved regularly in nature by much
more straightforward means.” (Lahti, 2003:
644)
Lahti’s argument from redundancy
 (1) If moral sense were an adaptation which serves to
promote the performance of human altruistic behaviors,
then moral sense would have been a redundant
mechanism.
 (2) However, given the conservatism of natural selection,
such a redundant mechanism is unlikely.
 Therefore, the view that moral sense is an adaptation
would probably be wrong.
Joyce
 Question: In what way might judging oneself
in moral terms benefit oneself ?
Basic Idea
 (1) An individual sincerely judging some available action
in a morally positive light increases the probability that the
individual will perform that action (likewise, mutatis
mutandis, judging an action in a morally negative light).
 (2) If reproductive fitness will be served by performance
or omission of a certain action, then it will be served by
any psychological mechanism that ensures or probabilifies
this performance or omission (relative to mechanisms that
do so less effectively).
Basic Idea
 (3) Thus self-directed moral judgment may enhance
reproductive fitness so long as it is attached to the
appropriate actions (namely, the fitness enhancing actions
that will in many circumstances include helpful and
cooperative behaviors).
 (4) Therefore it may serve an individual’s fitness to judge
certain prosocial behaviors—her own prosocial
behaviors—in moral terms.
Crucial Point
 How does moral judgment engage motivation
and thus probabilify action?
 Moral judgment affects motivation: That
there is such a connection can be brought out
by considering the phenomenon of weakness
of will.
Weakness of will
 Consider how we humans, though pretty good at calculating
long-term benefits, are notoriously poor at getting our
motivations in line with the output of these deliberations. Even
when it is abundantly clear that the pursuit of short-term gain
is going to harm us in the long run, we still find ourselves
tempted and succumbing to temptation.
 We eat junk food, we stay up too late, we grade our students’
essays at the last possible moment, we accumulate an
assortment of barely used exercise machines in the attic, we
procrastinate endlessly on nearly everything.
 No one could deny that the inability to get one’s
motivations in line with what one judges to be prudent,
the tendency to surrender to instant gratification while
trampling the inner voice of practical reason, is a marked
feature of human psychology.
 Prudential calculations in favor of a course of action (“I
should order the salad for the sake of my health”) simply
do not reliably result in pursuit of that course of action.
Question
 Q: why has natural selection left us with a design flaw that
so often handicaps the pursuit of our own best interests?
 Presumably it is the result of different psychological
faculties, each with its own agenda, tugging for
satisfaction in the behavioral realm.
 But though this “competing faculties” view is likely to be
correct (as even Plato recognized), we might still wonder
why natural selection would not rectify such a glaring
problem.
Answer
 The probable answer is that weakness of will is the
inevitable price to pay for some other valuable end. That
end might be the ability of a creature to calculate
subjective preferences in a flexible way.
 A creature that in any circumstances conceives of a
banana as the highest good will be at a constant
disadvantage to a creature that is able to reassess the value
of the banana depending on circumstances. A banana
isn’t worth much when you are full; when you are on the
brink of starvation it may in fact be the highest available
good.
 The inevitable price of any such plastic system of
goal assessment (i.e., practical intelligence) is error.
 Weakness of will, according to this view, is a
particular type of this sort of practical error, where
the lure of tangible short-term profit causes a subject
to make a mistake, to “rationalize” a poor choice.
 Suppose there was a realm of action of such recurrent
importance that nature did not want practical success to depend
on the frail caprice of ordinary human practical intelligence.
That realm might, for example, pertain to certain forms of
cooperative behavior toward one’s fellows. The benefits that
may come from cooperation—enhanced reputation, for
example—are typically long-term values, and merely to be
aware of and desire these long-term advantages does not
guarantee that the goal will be effectively pursued, any more
than the firm desire to live a long life guarantees that a person
will give up fatty foods.
 The hypothesis, then, is that natural selection opted for a
special motivational mechanism for this realm: moral
conscience.
 If you are thinking of an outcome in terms of something that
you desire, you can always say to yourself “But maybe forgoing
the satisfaction of that desire wouldn’t be that terrible.”
 If, however, you are thinking of the outcome as something that
is desirable—as having the quality of demanding desire—then
your scope for rationalizing a spur-of-the-moment devaluation
narrows.
 When a person believes that an act of cooperation is
morally required—that it must be performed whether he
likes it or not—then the possibilities for further internal
negotiation on the matter diminish.
 If a person believes an action to be required by an
authority from which he cannot escape, if he believes that
in not performing it he will not merely frustrate himself,
but will become reprehensible and deserving of
disapprobation—then he is more likely to perform the
action.
道德判斷作為個人之決心
 The distinctive value of imperatives imbued with practical clout
is that they silence further calculation, which is a valuable thing
when our prudential calculations can so easily be hijacked by
interfering forces and rationalizations.
 What is being suggested, then, is that self-directed moral
judgments can act as a kind of personal commitment, in that
thinking of one’s actions in moral terms eliminates certain
practical possibilities from the space of deliberative reasoning
in a way that thinking “I just don’t like X” does not.
 Daniel Dennett (1995), who argues that moral principles
function as “conversation-stoppers”: considerations that can be
dropped into a decision process (be it a personal or
interpersonal decision) in order to stop mechanisms or people
from endlessly processing, endlessly reconsidering, endlessly
asking for further justification.
 In deciding how to treat a criminal, the consideration “He has a
moral right to a fair trial” seems to close off further discussion.
In deciding whether to shoplift, the consideration “It is wrong
to shoplift; I mustn’t do it” puts an end to deliberations.
 Imagine a person with no capacity to engage in moralized
thinking. Assume that it is in his interests to maintain a
reciprocal relationship with someone, and he does so either
because he consciously desires the profits brought by the
exchange or because he has been endowed with sympathy
(albeit conditional sympathy) for his partner.
 Suppose, though, that he reneges on a deal for some arbitrary
reason—perhaps the lure of short-term profit overwhelms him
in a moment of distraction. (And why shouldn’t it? Ex
hypothesi, his reluctance to cheat is not based on a principle.)
 How does he now feel? The fact that he has broken a
habit may surprise him. The fact that he has hurt
someone he didn’t want to hurt may cause him
disappointment and distress. But the important thing is
that he can feel no guilt, for guilt requires the thought that
one has transgressed against a norm.
 With no moral concepts in play, this person does not have
access to the thought that he deserves to be punished for
his action. He regrets, but he cannot repent.
 His active sympathy may prompt in him a desire to
alleviate the victim’s suffering (he may even feel a desire
to compensate the injured party); however, since he has
no thought that he must do something to make amends,
if he is distracted by other matters, causing his sympathy
for the victim to fade, then there is nothing to propel his
deliberations back to the resolution that “something must
be done.”
 “Sympathy,” James Q. Wilson once wrote, “is a
fragile and evanescent emotion. It is easily aroused
but quickly forgotten; when remembered but not
acted upon, its failure to produce action is easily
rationalized. The sight of a lost dog or a wounded
fledgling can upset us greatly even though we know
that the woods are filled with lost and injured
animals”
 By comparison, a person who in addition to being sympathetic
judges that cheating is morally wrong will feel very differently if
on occasion she succumbs to temptation.
 She can tell herself that she has done something wrong, that
her action was unfair or unjust, that she must make amends,
that she not only has risked punishment but deserves it. The
emotion of guilt is available to her.
 In addition, she can judge that other offenders deserve
punishment too—a thought that was unavailable to our
previous nonmoralized agent.
 The fact that these more robust forms of
self-recrimination are available to the
moralized thinker when she does cheat
strongly suggests that when she is behaving
herself her motivation not to cheat is more
reliable and resolute than that of her nonmoralized counterpart.
 Moral judgment can step in on those occasions when
prudence may falter (in particular when the prudential
gain is a probabilistic long-term affair).
 A judgment like “That wouldn’t be right; it would be
reprehensible for me to do that” can play a dynamic role
in deliberation, emotion, and desire-formation, prompting
and strengthening certain desires and blocking certain
considerations from even arising in practical deliberation,
thus increasing the likelihood that certain adaptive social
behaviors will be performed.
 Needless to say, a moral judgment in favor of an action is
no guarantor that the action will be performed, but so
long as it at least increases the likelihood of the
performance then this may be its evolutionary function.
 Of course, ultimately what determines whether a person
acts is the strength of her desires in favor of acting
compared with her desires against acting.
 This last observation, however, raises a worry about the
whole preceding argument.
Lahti’s argument revisited
 It may be true that moral judgment does bolster
motivation, and that typically it does so better than
ordinary prudential deliberation alone; however, as the
biologist and philosopher David Lahti (2003) points out,
this still leaves us with the question of why natural
selection did not simply make humans with stronger
desires that directly favor cooperation in certain
circumstances. After all, for some adaptive behaviors this
is precisely what evolution has granted us.
 Protective actions toward our offspring, for example,
appear to be regulated by robust raw emotions, not
primarily by any moralistic sense of duty.
 These emotions are by and large stoutly resistant to
the lures of weakness of will: Few are tempted to
rationalize a course of action that promises shortterm gain while resulting in injury to their beloved
infant.
 Moreover, insofar as our hominid forebears already had in
place the neurological mechanisms for such strong desires,
it is something of a mystery why the inherently
conservative force of natural selection would not press
into service these extant mechanisms in order to govern
any novel adaptive behavior, rather than fabricating a
“radically different” and “biologically unprecedented
mechanism for a purpose which is achieved regularly in
nature by much more straightforward means” (Lahti 2003:
644).
Response
 Whenever an evolutionary psychologist hypothesizes about the
presence of a specialized mechanism functioning to govern an
adaptive behavior, the following question can always be raised:
“Why would natural selection bother with that mechanism?
Why wouldn’t it simply create an overwhelmingly strong desire
to perform that behavior?”
 That there is something fishy about this question is revealed if
we consider some non-moral cases. Think instead about the
psychological reward systems that have evolved in humans
regarding sex and eating.
 One might ask why natural selection bothered giving us
all that complicated physiological equipment needed for
having an orgasm—why not design us simply to want to
have sex? It seems a misguided question. Natural selection
did make us want to have sex, and one of its means of
ensuring this desire was precisely the human orgasm.
Similarly, natural selection made us want to eat food, and
one of its means of achieving this was to create a creature
for whom food tastes good.
 And perhaps natural selection has made us want to
cooperate, and granting us a tendency to think of
cooperation in moral terms (where this includes the
capacity for guilt) is a means of securing this desire.
 That natural selection may employ a distinctive
means for creating and strengthening a type of
fitness-advancing desire is no more mysterious in the
moral case than in the other two cases.
 Granted, in the moral case we are considering a “biologically
unprecedented mechanism”—something that evolved uniquely
in the hominid line—but insofar as human social relations are
radically different from those of other animals, a radically
different solution may have been necessary.
 Note also that despite the conservatism of natural selection,
there is an obvious reason that distinct fitness-advancing
behaviors will often require different mechanisms motivating
them: If eating or promise-keeping were rewarded with an
orgasm, an individual might not bother with sex.
道德判斷的公共性
 A moral judgment is something that may be asserted in
the course of collective negotiation, may be employed to
stake a claim, to justify a decision, to provide warrant for
a punishment, to criticize or praise another’s conduct or
character, or to present evidence of one’s own character.
 The manner in which thinking of a possible course of
action in morally positive terms promotes the motivation
to perform it cannot be divorced from this public sphere.
道德判斷提供行動以公共證成
 Even when my private conscience guides me to refrain
from cheating with the thought “Cheating is wrong,” I am
aware that this is a consideration that might be brought
into the domain of public deliberation if I am required to
justify my actions; I am accepting that, were I to cheat,
punishment from others would be warranted.
 By comparison, the proposition “I just don’t like cheating”
may be brought forward to explain one’s actions, but it
lacks the normative justificatory force of a moral
consideration
道德判斷提供行動以公共證成
 Lahti’s puzzle is solved when we realize that a moral
judgment affects motivation not by giving an extra
little private mental nudge in favor of certain courses
of action, but by providing a deliberative
consideration that (putatively) cannot be legitimately
ignored, thus allowing moral judgments—even selfdirected ones—to play a justificatory role on a social
stage in a way that unmediated desires cannot.
 This reasoning leads me to supplement the simple
hypothesis with which we started (i.e., that the
evolutionary function of moral judgment is to provide
added motivation in favor of certain adaptive social
behaviors).
 Morally disapproving of one’s own action (or potential
action)—as opposed to disliking that action—provides a
basis for corresponding other-directed moral judgments.
 道德判斷的兩個作用：增強動機、公共證成。
 No matter how much I dislike something, this inclination
alone is not relevant to my judgments concerning others
pursuing that thing: “I won’t pursue X because I don’t like
X” makes perfect sense, but “You won’t pursue X because
I don’t like X” makes little sense.
 By comparison, the assertion of “The pursuit of X is
morally wrong” demands both my avoidance of X and
yours.
道德判斷提供審思與決策的公共架構
 By providing a framework within which both one’s
own actions and others’ actions may be evaluated,
moral judgments can act as a kind of “common
currency” for collective negotiation and decision
making.
 Moral judgment thus can function as a kind of social
glue, bonding individuals together in a shared
justificatory structure and providing a tool for
solving many group coordination problems.
 Of particular importance is that although a
nonmoralized strong negative emotional reaction
(e.g., anger) may prompt a punitive response, it takes
a moral judgment to license punishment, and thus
the latter serves far more effectively to govern public
decisions in a large group than do non-moralized
emotions, especially when such emotions may (at the
end of a long day’s hunting and gathering) be listless,
distracted, or divided.
 Guilt—involving a self-directed judgment
that punishment is deserved—may serve the
individual by inhibiting his own usual
defensive mechanisms, prompting him to
submit to punishment or at least to apologize,
and thus quickly get back on a good footing
with his fellows.
Summary of Joyce’s argument
 Moral judgments can act as effective personal
commitments better than mere inhibitions,
providing a kind of motivational bulwark.
Moral judgment as interpersonal commitment
 Basic Idea:
 (1) The very fact that abiding by morality is in
general a conspicuously costly undertaking gives it
obvious potentiality for serving as a public
commitment. (With these costs, at a certain point the
price of faking moral commitment becomes higher
than simply being genuinely committed.)（道德判
斷是在人我之間公開宣示個人之決心）
道德判斷：個人決心之公開宣示
 (2) Declaring “For me to pursue X would be wrong” is
like a contract: It is an acceptance that punishment is
appropriate if one does pursue X.
 (3) One can signal one’s moral commitment in a myriad
of ways beyond just declaring it. Acting in accordance
with it (i.e., never pursuing the temptations of X) will
usually involve sacrifice; confessing and submitting to
punishment if you do succumb to temptation will be
harmful; going to great lengths to administer punishment
to others who break the norm may bring risks; raising
one’s children to have this value takes trouble.
道德判斷：個人決心之公開宣示
 (4) In all these ways one signals to others in a costly
manner that one is committed to guiding one’s own
actions by this moral judgment, that one is not going
to pursue X.
 (5) Others who accept this may consequently alter
their actions toward the morally committed
individual, choosing him for cooperative ventures—
deciding that he is a promising mate, a good trading
partner, or simply a valuable member of society.
例子
 Consider the inconvenient lengths to which a person
might go in order to secure a refund of $10 for a faulty
consumer item.
 If it is pointed out that this inconvenience far outweighs
the cost of simply buying a new item, the response will
usually be “Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing.”
 What sense can be made of this apparently irrational
attitude?
解釋
 One answer is that in behaving in this way a person
establishes a reputation for herself, and thereby
reduces the chances of being cheated in the future.
 But this has only limited applicability, for we often
pursue things “on principle” even knowing that our
future interactants will know nothing of this
behavior.
Frank的解釋
 Robert Frank’s (1988) answer is that such
behavior is governed by emotions—in this
case, an emotion we might call “indignant
anger”—and such emotions act as guarantors
that certain behaviors will be pursued even to
the point of self-harm, overriding prudent
calculations.
 Consider a shopkeeper’s point of view. If he is faced with
a customer who always calculates prudently, and he also
knows that it will cost this customer more than $10 worth
of inconvenience to return an item, then he can without a
care sell a defective $10 item.
 But if faced with a second customer whom he knows will
pursue the matter of a faulty item to great lengths, who
will sacrifice an irrational amount of energy on seeking
redress, he will ensure that the $10 item he is selling is in
good working order.
 Now ask yourself which kind of customer you would
prefer to be: one who continually gets ripped off, or one
who gets good service.
 The irony is that the latter kind of customer—the one
who will go to self-destructive lengths to attain justice—
will typically not need to go to such lengths (so long as
she is able to communicate her “irrationality” to the
shopkeeper), and will thus be better off.
良心：堅決的情感
 According to Frank, a moral conscience is an emotional
faculty that acts in a similar way as this emotional resolve
to return a $10 item: as a guarantor that good conduct will
be pursued even when it may be irrational to do so.
 Which kind of person would you want as a companion in
a dangerous cooperative venture: someone whose
cooperative behavior is governed by an ongoing prudent
deliberative procedure, or someone who can commit to
cooperating and will continue to do so even when it may
be prudentially irrational?
良心提高適存度
 No one has put the answer quite as succinctly as the
cartoon character Homer Simpson: “We don’t need a
thinker, we need a doer—someone who will act without
considering the consequences!”
 If your survival depends on your being selected as a
partner in cooperative ventures (including your being
selected as a mate), then it will be rational for you to
choose to be the second kind of person.
良心提高適存度
 In other words, in circumstances where cooperative exchanges
are important it is often rational to choose to have a faculty that
urges you to what would otherwise be irrational behavior. That
faculty is a conscience—a repertoire of judgments and
emotions (most notable, guilt) that motivate behavior in
accordance with accepted standards of conduct even when
external sanctions are absent.
 (Obviously, people don’t really choose to have a conscience at
some early point in their lives; rather, biological natural
selection has done the choosing. The point is that,
hypothetically, a prudent person would choose to have a
conscience.)
區分兩種價值
 Frank’s theory forces us to draw a distinction between the value
that derives from being able to communicate to others your
steadfast willingness to do something and the value that comes
from actually doing it.
 The former is the primary source of value. In the case of the
defective $10 item, the value came from being able to
communicate to the shopkeeper a willingness to pursue the
matter to great lengths. This caused the shopkeeper to think
twice about defrauding you, and so you got the item replaced
and weren’t forced to pursue things to great lengths.
要是你的虛張聲勢被店員揭穿呢？
 But what if the shopkeeper calls your bluff ? Then your
commitment to pursue the matter will lead to you actually
pursuing the matter (of course); you may end up with
your $10 item replaced, but only after having gone to
more than $10 worth of trouble.
 And surely, in this case, your commitment has backfired,
forcing you to perform an irrational action?
即使被揭穿也仍然值得
 Not necessarily. Frank recognizes a secondary source of
value: By performing the action in question, you have
strengthened and sustained your commitment, rather than
undermined it, and so placed yourself in good stead for
future interactions.
 In other words, the presence of some mechanism of
commitment may alter whether the action in question
really is irrational for you perform.
第二種價值
 Going to enormous lengths to get a $10 item replaced
may be irrational for a non-committed person, but it need
not be irrational for a person who already has in place an
emotional commitment to go to great lengths.
 This secondary value need not always be available, for the
commitment may involve a resolve to perform an act that
is not merely inconvenient but self-destructive.
 (A good example of a commitment is brandishing a
grenade and threatening to blow yourself up along with
your enemies unless they comply with some request.)
 In such cases, yes, the commitment in question is a
guarantor that an irrational action will be performed, and
the only value in play is the primary kind of value.
 But across a range of cases the presence of the
commitment alters the cost-benefit structure, since it
introduces the potential benefit of strengthening the
commitment.
Frank之理論的較佳描述
 In order to cover both kinds of cases, it is preferable to
describe Frank’s theory as claiming not that it may be in a
person’s best interests to show a firm willingness to
perform irrational actions, but rather that it may be in a
person’s best interests to show a firm willingness to
perform actions that would otherwise be irrational.
 The advice is not “Act imprudently” but rather “Restrict
the role of prudential calculation in your decision
procedure.”
Frank之理論的缺點
 There is a limitation in Frank’s presentation of his theory that
we are in a position to improve upon. He takes himself to be
explaining how it might be to an individual’s advantage to have
a conscience, but he treats the conscience seemingly just as a set
of communicable motivation-engaging feelings in favor of and
against certain courses of action.
 (“Consider, for example, a person capable of strong guilt
feelings. This person will not cheat even when it is in her
material interests to do so. The reason is not that she fears
getting caught but that she simply does not want to cheat”
(Frank 1988: 53).)
道德判斷更能扮演好Frank的解釋項角色
 But we have seen that such raw aversions alone, without
associated moral cognitions—e.g., “I would deserve
punishment if I did that”—don’t suffice for the emotion of
guilt, and thus don’t suffice for having a conscience.
 Although Frank succeeds in explaining why natural selection
may favor a creature able to demonstrate its commitment to
what would otherwise be imprudent practices, he doesn’t
explain why conceiving of certain actions as “morally forbidden”
is a more effective sort of commitment device than just having
strong emotional inhibitions against these actions.
以道德判斷修改Frank之理論
 But we now have the resources to provide this
explanation. The argument pursued in the previous
section proposed that moral judgments can act as
effective personal commitments better than mere
inhibitions, providing a kind of motivational bulwark.
 It follows that if someone is able to communicate to
others that he is thus personally committed, then moral
judgments can also act as effective interpersonal
commitments.
 Accepting this line of reasoning leads us somewhat away from
Frank’s model.
 Because Frank has an impoverished view of conscience—
seeing it as merely a set of aversions—then his task is to
explain how such aversions might be communicated
persuasively to others.
 His answer is that human life is replete with emotional
communicative displays that to a significant extent are resistant
to counterfeit signaling (tone of voice, facial muscles, pupil
dilation, perspiration, blushing, trembling, laughter, crying, eye
movements, yawning, posture, breathing rate, etc.).
 But although I don’t by any means wish to ignore the
central emotional ingredients of morality, I think it is
important also to emphasize its cognitive element.
Therefore my task is to explain how such moral
judgments (even ones made in the absence of
emotion) might be communicated persuasively to
others.
 Thankfully, this is not a difficult burden to discharge. Suppose,
just to clarify things, that for a moment we put aside entirely the
emotional side of morality. Emotions are by no means the only
way in which interpersonal commitments might be made. One
can make a public commitment by rearranging external
constraints—e.g., by burning bridges behind you (literally) as
you advance, or by undertaking an arduous initiation rite, or by
signing a binding contract.
 Churchill was making such a commitment when he declared to
the world “I would rather see London in ruins and ashes
than . . . tamely and abjectly enslaved.”
 The important thing about a commitment is that it
forecloses future possibilities in order to bring about a
desirable end by altering others’ choices (where “others”
includes future time slices of oneself). It can be
purposeful or involuntary (perhaps even hardwired),
absolute or probabilistic.
Joyce之論點回顧
 The very fact that abiding by morality is in general a
conspicuously costly undertaking gives it obvious
potentiality for serving as a public commitment.
 (With these costs, at a certain point the price of
faking moral commitment becomes higher than
simply being genuinely committed.)
Joyce之論點回顧
 Declaring “For me to pursue X would be wrong” is like a
contract: It is an acceptance that punishment is appropriate if
one does pursue X.
 One can signal one’s moral commitment in a myriad of ways
beyond just declaring it. Acting in accordance with it (i.e., never
pursuing the temptations of X) will usually involve sacrifice;
confessing and submitting to punishment if you do succumb to
temptation will be harmful; going to great lengths to administer
punishment to others who break the norm may bring risks;
raising one’s children to have this value takes trouble.
Joyce之論點回顧
 In all these ways one signals to others in a costly
manner that one is committed to guiding one’s own
actions by this moral judgment, that one is not going
to pursue X.
 Others who accept this may consequently alter their
actions toward the morally committed individual,
choosing him for cooperative ventures—deciding
that he is a promising mate, a good trading partner,
or simply a valuable member of society.
解釋良心為何提高適存度
 We now have a plausible hypothesis concerning the
adaptive value of having a conscience:
 Moral judgments serve as personal commitments,
meaning they need not be signaled at all. Moral
judgments also serve as interpersonal commitments,
meaning that some kind of honest or costly signaling
is required.
解釋良心為何提高適存度
 Both kinds of commitment have a paradoxical air, in
that the benefit of the commitment is attained only
by not aiming deliberately at it.
 In the case of personal commitments, replacing
clear-headed prudential calculation with coarsegrained and unquestioning moral thinking will, on
many occasions, serve one’s prudential welfare better.
解釋良心為何提高適存度
 In the case of interpersonal commitments, prudential
welfare will often be best served if one can commit to
performing what appear to be, and may in reality be,
downright imprudent actions.
 (The point is that the act of signaling that one is so
committed may remain prudent, especially since if
everything goes according to plan the consequence of this
signaling is that the threatened imprudent action need
never actually be performed.)
道德判斷之作為集體證成架構
 Although these two ideas have been teased apart for
clarity, my response to Lahti suggested that the two types
of commitment are in fact psychologically entwined; the
way in which a private moral judgment affects one’s
resolve cannot be properly understood in isolation from
the way in which its public declaration would affect the
resolve of others.
 When we think of ourselves in moral terms we are
thinking of ourselves in social terms, we are evaluating
actions against the background of a collective justificatory
framework.
蘊涵
 若道德天生論為真，在倫理學上會有哪
些蘊涵？它可以回答傳統倫理學中的哪
些議題？
Implications for ethics—
Undermining thesis considered
 Darwin: “…I do not wish to maintain that any
strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties
were to become as active and as highly developed
as in man, would acquire exactly the same moral
sense as ours. In the same manner as various
animals have some sense of beauty, though they
admire widely-different objects, so they might have
a sense of right and wrong, though led by it to
follow widely different lines of conduct.
 If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were
reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees,
there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females
would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to
kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their
fertile daughters; and no one would think of
interfering…The one course ought to have been
followed, and the other ought not; the one would have
been right and the other wrong.” (1879(2004): 73-74)
Undermining thesis: F. Cobbe
 Frances Cobbe: [A Darwinian explanation of
conscience] aims a….deadly blow at ethics, by
affirming that, not only has our moral sense come to
us from a source commanding no special respect, but
that it answers to no external or durable, not to say
universal or eternal, reality, and is merely tentative
and provisional, the provincial prejudice, as we may
describe it, of this little world and its temporary
inhabitants, which would be looked upon with a
smile of derision by better-informed people now
residing on Mars.
Undermining Thesis
 Claim: a genealogy of moral sense threatens to
undermine one’s justification for the truth of moral
judgments.
A possible rejoinder
 A possible reply: not really, for each innate faculty of
scientific inquiry surely has an evolutionary account;
such an account, however, does not threaten to debunk
the truth of scientific judgments.
Why the rejoinder fails
 However, note that there is a contrast between moral
sense and other innate faculties of scientific inquiry:
 Could moral sense—the faculty for making moral
judgment—have been selected for even if it never
produces any true judgment? The answer is “Yes.”
 Could any faculty of scientific inquiry—the faculty for
making, say, arithmetical and scientific beliefs—have
been selected for even if no one judgment that it
produces is true? The answer is “No.”
Why the rejoinder fails
 Indeed, we can make sense of the evolutionary
genealogy of moral sense without its making any true
moral judgments. But the same cannot be said of any
faculty of scientific inquiry.
Why moral realism is redundant
 Since moral judgments can be explained entirely
without invoking their truth—i.e., without invoking any
moral facts which they represent—the hypothesis
pertaining to moral facts seems to be redundant.
Farewell to moral facts
 Now, in virtue of Ockham’s Razor, moral facts can go,
which means the objective foundation for morality is
missing.
 Indeed, in claiming that “the objective foundation for
morality is redundant,” Ruse (1986: 254; see also Ruse
& Wilson 1986: 186-187) argues for the conclusion that
the evolutionary basis of morality undermines morality.
Joyce’s reservations
 Joyce’s reservations: if the moral facts are reducible to
the non-moral facts invoked in the genealogical
explanation, then the former cannot be eliminated on
grounds of parsimony, any more than cats should be
eliminated from our ontology because we can explain
them in terms of physics.
From moral realism to moral
naturalism
 If there is no plausible naturalistic theory of moral
properties available, then the objectivity of moral
judgments will be undermined.
 So now the question becomes: what are the prospects of
moral naturalism?